Mystery Science Road Trip 3000

A little while ago Kent had a birthday, and Jen gave him the best present ever: VIP tickets to a Mystery Science Theater 3000 Live show. The date of the show finally rolled around, so we jumped in the Skelleymobile and headed off on a road trip.

Faithful blog readers will know that we like to use car trips as brainstorming time. Our open projects are dwindling in number as we complete novels and launch them into the world. In fact, out of our first three trilogies, we currently have only one book that’s unwritten, and it’s most of the way outlined already. The part of it that’s not nailed down yet involves a lot of moving parts that all need to mesh together just so, and “in a moving car while Kent pays attention to traffic” didn’t seem like the best environment for tackling it. Enter: the Ghost Novels!

Before this trip we had a few wisps of ideas for the way we want the supernatural to work in our newest story world. Now, after a couple of hours of discussion, we have a much clearer picture of the way our ghosts will work, and even the ghost of a plot (see what we did there?). At this point it’s more like two or three plotlings, some of which might work together and some of which contradict each other. A lot more conversation will be needed before we’re ready to start writing. But it felt good to explore a whole new universe, especially this one at Halloween time. We’re surrounded by spooky stories and it’s exciting to start to work on our own.

You know what else is exciting? Getting to have a conversation with Joel Hodgson (who is very nice! — he told Kent he asked a great question!), having our pictures taken on the Satellite of Love with Joel, Jonah, the Bots, and Pearl Forrester’s clone Synthia, and then watching a live riffing of a truly terrible movie.

Most exciting of all? Having a writing partner who shares your sense of humor.